122 
Forest and Stream 
INLAND BIRD-BANDING ASS’N 
A REVIEW OF WHAT BIRD-BANDING IN AMERICA MEANS 
AND HOW IT HELPS IN DETERMINING MIGRATION ROUTES 
By JOHN T. NICHOLS 
F orest and 
Stream for 
April, 1922, 
published a 
note on the organ¬ 
ization of the New 
England Bird- 
Banding Associa¬ 
tion. We are now 
in receipt of data 
concerning the or¬ 
ganization of a 
similar association 
to aid the U. S. 
Biological Survey’s 
study of life his¬ 
tories and move¬ 
ments of birds in 
the Mississippi 
Valley. This is to 
be known as the 
Inland Bird-Band¬ 
ing Association. 
Its president is S. 
Prentiss Baldwin 
of Cleveland; vice- 
president, Profes¬ 
sor Leon J. Cole 
of the University 
of Wisconsin; 
treasurer, Herbert 
L. Stoddard of the 
Milwaukee Mu¬ 
seum ; and secre¬ 
tary, Wm. I. Lyon 
of Waukegan, Ill. 
We read: 
“Do you know 
the fascination of 
trapping and band¬ 
ing wild birds ? 
Have you held a 
bird in your hands, 
examined him 
carefully, released 
him, and then 
found that instead 
of being frightened 
away he comes back to your traps again 
and again; sometimes the same day, the 
same week, perhaps he reports to you 
nearly every day all summer; yes, and 
some of them year after year. . . . 
“This method of bird study has been 
adopted by the U. S. Biological Survey 
(Washington, D. C.) and Special Per¬ 
mits for Bird-banding are issued to those 
who will volunteer to place the bands 
which are furnished by the Survey. . . . 
“At Chicago, at the time of the meet¬ 
ing of the American Ornithologists’ 
Union, on Tuesday, October 24, 1922, a 
bird-handers’ dinner and meeting was 
held; it was a large and enthusiastic 
meeting attended by many ornithologists, 
from many parts of the United States 
and Canada. At this meeting the Inland 
Bird-Banding Association was formed, 
for the purpose of assisting and Cooperat¬ 
Map showing duck-banding returns 
ing with the Biological Survey in organ¬ 
izing this work in Canada, and the 
Central States and the States of the 
Mississippi Valley, from the Appalachian 
Mountains to the Rocky Mountains and 
south to the Gulf of Mexico.” 
CPORTSMEN and out-door persons 
^ generally who are interested in birds 
should know something of what bird¬ 
handing is and its status in America at 
the present writing. Our knowledge of 
the natural history of wild animals every¬ 
where suffers from a certain vagueness 
due to inability of distinguishing one in¬ 
dividual from another. Each March 
robins return to sing in the dawn and 
nest in our gardens. We follow the 
vicissitudes of their family life with in¬ 
terest and see their speckle-breasted 
youngsters launched into the world. 
1 hen they mingle 
with flocks of their 
own kind and we 
know them no 
more. They may 
be wandering in 
the flocks of robins 
among the holly, 
mistletoe and gray- 
bearded trees of 
the southern 
states, they may 
be with the smaller 
flocks which al¬ 
most any winter 
are to be found in 
sheltered swamps 
of southern New 
England. Who can 
say? Next spring 
they are back 
again, but are 
these the same in¬ 
dividuals? Now 
and then we are 
convinced that 
some pair of birds 
are old friends, 
but how is one to 
prove it? 
T h e expedient 
of marking indi¬ 
vidual birds so that 
they may be recog¬ 
nized again is not 
new. In Europe, 
especially, this has 
been done for some 
years on a rather 
large scale, and 
interesting facts 
have come to light 
concerning bird 
migration which 
could not have 
been obtained in 
any other way. 
The proven best 
method of marking is to place a small, 
light, metal band on the bird’s leg bear¬ 
ing a serial number for identification 
purposes, and a request that the finder 
notify some central bureau, whence the 
band is issued and where records are 
kept on file. 
A N idea of what has been done in this 
line of research in this country may 
be obtained by roughly sketching its his¬ 
tory. Any bird-banding here prior to 
twenty years ago was of desultory char¬ 
acter and very restricted scope. When 
interest in its possibilities first crystalized 
into a definite attempt to accomplish 
something along this line, with an organ¬ 
ization for distributing bands to persons 
who would be interested in using them, 
of the several persons interested, Prof. 
(Continued on page 143). 
